Cannibal Corpse, M/C

Chapter Eleven

Three days later, they were ready.

Although Brightman was an asshole and the bikers had absolutely zero respect for guys like him, they had to give him one thing: he got things done. Everything they wanted, they got. If it wasn’t on base, and most of the things they asked for weren’t, Brightman had it flown in—weapons, gear, and motorcycles. Slaughter’s hardtail was ready and waiting for him, but the other six had no scoots. Brightman had fixed that. A variety of bikes were flown in (“liberated” from the Outlaws clubhouse in Milwaukee, apparently). Apache Dan found himself a chromed-out FXR that he fell in love with, Shanks and Fish both chose black ice Screaming Eagle Road Kings, Jumbo grabbed a custom ‘54 Panhead, and once Irish sat in the saddle of a sweet green flame Softail lowrider, you couldn’t get him off it. It was a serious improvement over the variety of ugly, patchwork, Frankensteinian ratbikes he’d thrown together over the years.

There was one bike that nobody touched because they knew it would be Moondog’s: a Boss Hoss 375 Horse with a deadly 100-HP nitrous boost. It was ceramic black with a red spider on the gas tank, a road monster with so much meat that nobody but Moondog wanted to tangle with that lady.

“That’s her,” he said when he saw it. “That’s the Widow.”

Brightman also got them an olive drab school bus to stow their supplies, bikes, extra fuel, and to take cover when needed. It was customized with a fold-down ramp in the back to run their bikes up, bunks for the boys, and a radio with which Slaughter would contact Brightman when he made the grab of the bio. Anytime a club went on a road ride for any distance, they brought along a chase vehicle like the bus. But under Moondog’s precise instructions it was more than a chase vehicle, it was a War Wagon riveted with ?” steel plating cut with narrow gunports and impact-resistant black one-way plexiglass for the windshield. Neither the steel plating nor the plexiglass would stop a heavy round like a .50 caliber, but would give them protection against 9mm and the like. He also had a V-shaped cow-catcher made out of scrap metal and rebar welded to the front end.

“It’ll come in handy,” he said, “in case we have to plow through wrecks or anything.”

Once the bikes were dialed in, they leathered up, got into formation and Moondog said, “Keep the dirty side down and watch your asses.”

Then they throttled up, hungry for pavement.

The Army base was roughly an hour from the Minnesota border, so within sixty minutes, the Disciples crossed into the land of the buffalo…and the undead.

They rode into the wind, high and tight, Slaughter out front as chapter president with Apache Dan at his side as road captain. Next came Shanks and Irish and Jumbo. Moondog was the sweep, the backdoor. As warlord and probably the best rider outside of Slaughter himself, he needed a clear view of the entire column so he could see any trouble long before it happened. Fish trailed in the War Wagon. They all carried walkie-talkies so they could remain in contact with the Wagon.

The pack took the road on their iron horses mile by mile with a collective thunder of six purring hogs and other than a few wrecks, there was nothing to get in their way. Not like the old days when you had citizens in their General Motors cages clogging up all that free space. Slaughter only wished it was the old days when they took to the road with thirty or forty bikes and made a deafening roar, an army of hardriders, invincible, hell-bent and horny, looking for a fight, a rumble, a bare knuckle contest to keep their edge, pussy and booze, fast times and stoned nights.

Those were the days.

But even with some of that maudlin bullshit softening his brain, nothing could take away how he felt to be riding with his brothers and nothing could take from them the thrill, the charge, the brotherhood of being together and not just for a road ride or a field event, some three-day orgy of booze and broads and blood, but a mission, a barbarian campaign. Nothing got their hearts pounding and the red stuff in their veins burning hotter then the idea of an engagement, and this little party was going to be the end-all.

You’re going to lose these boys and you know it, Slaughter thought to himself as the wind blew into his face and his mirrored sunglasses showed him a world that was plucked and pitted like an old rack of bones. Either all of them or most of them. You’ll lose them or they’ll lose you. No way you’re getting out of this pissing contest intact. It’s gonna be dark. It’s gonna be ugly.

“And it’s gonna be the best time these machineheads have had in many years,” he said under his breath.

So like a knife drawn from gut to sternum, they cut north through the desolation of Minnesota, jumping off the I and onto 10 which would take them northwest across the state line and to Fargo, and into the darkest bowels of the Dakotas where the shit would get deep and dangerous. In St. Cloud, which looked to Slaughter like the set from some post-apocalyptic movie with its shattered buildings, burned-out neighborhoods, and skeletons sitting in cars, they crossed the Mississippi and it looked pretty much the same on the other bank, not a single WELCOME TO THE DEADLANDS sign to be had. Though, interestingly, someone had taken some articulated skeletons and withered brown cadavers that were almost skeletons and rigged them up on crossbars like scarecrows. There were several dozen of them. Along with a few crudely-painted skull-and-crossbone signs, this was the warning to the curious.

The only warning there would be.

As they passed out of St. Cloud they saw the dead wandering about through the ruins. Some of them stood around as the pack went by, more curious than anything.

About ten miles outside of the city they came upon a roadhouse with the amusing title of ‘The Royal Head’. Parked outside were about a dozen bikes, most of them rusty and spattered with mud. Slaughter got on the box and told Fish to pull over at the bend in the road.

“Could be Cannibal Corpse,” he told Moondog, who agreed. “Let’s go kick ass or get our asses kicked. A good dust-up will get the boys feeling like men again.”

“Sure as shit.”

There weren’t too many questions as Moondog passed out the pistol-gripped sawed-off 12-gauge pumps. They took the weapons happily.

“We go in quiet,” Moondog informed them, clipping a pair of white phosphorus grenades to his leather club vest. “Then we kill anything we find.”

The Disciples grinned.

“I’m smelling me some shiteaters,” Fish said, which was one of the many derogatory names the Disciples had for members of Cannibal Corpse.

“Let’s light this shit up then,” Apache Dan said.

Slaughter led the way through the stunted trees and across the gravel lot, his boys spread out behind him like commandos. There was absolutely no activity in or around the joint, just that hazy blue sky with the sun burning down like a hot yellow coin.

Slaughter motioned for the others to hang back as he went up to the door and tried it. It was open. He gave the Disciples the signal and they crept forward, tensing with anticipation to a man.

“We come across Coffin or Reptile, remember: those pricks are mine and mine alone,” he whispered to the others and they understood perfectly. It would have been a boon if any of them bagged Reptile or Coffin, but Slaughter wanted those two just a little bit more. The way he looked at it, the three Disciples they wasted had been done so on his watch.

He opened the door a crack and listened for activity.

There was nothing.

Either the place was empty, there was an ambush waiting, or the Disciples had caught the owners of those bikes with their pants down. He opened it a bit more and a gassy stink of putrefaction came out. Nothing new there, but it gave him ideas.

“All right,” he told Moondog. “Follow me in.”

Moondog gave him a look that plainly said he didn’t like it, that they didn’t know what they were stepping in here. That he, as warlord and sergeant-at-arms, advised a little reconnoitering first—there could be fifty wormboys out back for all they knew.

But Slaughter shook his head. The look in his eyes said all the warlord needed to know: These boys have been in-stir too long, man, they need to learn how to fight as one again, as a club.